Unfortunately the Rangers and House Liao would not be able to complete the take-over. No longer restricted by Victor and Katherine Steiner-Davion against involvement in the Chaos March after the FedCom Civil War, Duke George Hasek of the Capellan March ordered Cunningham's Commandos in to oppose them. The Commandos' veteran 1st regiment effortlessly crushed the battle-weary Rangers, who barely managed to retreat with a battalion's worth of troops out of the three which originally landed. [7] To add insult to injury, the Davion mercenaries captured the unit's CO, Colonel Nicholas Olson, steadfastly refusing all attempts by the Rangers to ransom their leader back. [5]

While many observers expected ChancellorSun-Tzu Liao to disown and release the gutted mercenary unit from Capellan service, to the amazement of all the Rangers were assigned to guard the highly important Shengli Arms factory on Victoria. When Shengli Arms stopped its efforts to build its own independent security force, many cynics suggested the Chancellor's posting was an effort to force the debt-ridden Rangers into a "Company Store" scheme to become that force. [5]

As the unit attempted to make the best of their situation under Major Timothy Rain, the Rangers' loyalties fragmented between him and Captain Fiona Schtaffel, a long-time compatriot of Nicholas Olson who advocated all their efforts be directed to seeking his release. [5] In December 3068 this conflict came to a violent head when the Rangers turned their guns against their employer without warning during the opening shots of the Word of BlakeJihad. [8]

While taking heavy losses at the hands of their fellow garrison unit Sung's Rangers, the mercenaries were able to inflict significant damage and cripple Shengli Arms' production lines before they were finally dislodged. Hijacking civilian DropShips to escape off-world, despite coming under attack by the AeroSpace Fighters of Sung's Air Raiders and the Victoria Home Guard, the Rangers succeeded in reaching and hijacking a JumpShip to flee the system. [8] The direction of their escape unknown, it was believed that the Rangers were secretly in the employ of Duke George Hasek via the willing or unwilling aid of Nicholas Olson.

Suborned and "enhanced" by the Manei Domini after their escape, including a number of Domini "liaisons" to keep them in line, the Blakist forces utilized the Rangers to harass and entrap elements of Devlin Stone's Coalition forces. Going to ground in the town of Oanhu on Fomalhaut, the Rangers were tracked down by "Damocles" with the Coalition forces sending in a small mercenary unit with DCMS militia support to capture the Blakist-aligned mercenaries in early 3079. The Rangers were finally defeated, but not before causing considerable collateral damage and civilian casualties. [9] During this final encounter, approximately a third of the Rangers were piloting Celestial-classOmniMechs, and each member of the unit had a 50,000 C-Bill bounty on their head.[10]